Performance evaluation of airport safety management systems in Taiwan

To comply with the International Civil Aviation Organization's requirements, all certified airports were required to implement and operate a Safety Management System (SMS) from November 2005. This study used a two-stage process to evaluate the performance of the SMS operations at Taiwan's Taoyuan (TPE), Kaohsiung (KHH), and Taipei Songshan (TSA) international airports. The first stage was to acquire the weights and rankings of the SMS components and elements using the Analytic Network Process (ANP), and the second stage was to evaluate and rank their performance using the fuzzy Technique of Ordering Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The rankings of SMS weights of components from high to low are: Safety risk management, Safety policy and objectives, Safety promotion, and Safety assurance. In stage two, we combined all evaluations of the components. The overall SMS performance ranking of these three international airports was TPE (1st), KHH (2nd), and TSA (3rd). The findings of this research should provide aviation authorities and airport administrators in Taiwan with directions for safety risk management and allocation of materials and resources to conduct safety training in order to prevent aviation accidents.